Archive for March, 2011

Reminder: This is the final column of the season. Don’t forget to followLa Rev on Twitterthroughout the Tournament andon Facebookfor updates on the column’s future.

“Know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It’s 25 hits. 25 hits in 500 at bats is 50 points, okay? There’s 6 months in a season, that’s about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week – just one – a gorp… you get a ground ball, you get a ground ball with eyes… you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week… and you’re in Yankee Stadium.” –Crash Davis

LeBron James is such a bum, huh? He keeps getting the ball in key late-game situations and he keeps failing. I think he might not have “it” in him. His blood’s just not cold enough. In the NBA, you’ve got to have that ice blood. You’ve got to be that ice-blooded killer in the clutch, and LeBron’s just not that player. At least that’s what the guys on TV keep saying. I mean, what are the Heat in last-second shots, 1-19? They’ve been terrible against the top five teams in the League, so LeBron must not be clutch. He must not have “it.” It’s weird, though, because I swear I remember him being the only good player on a Cavs team that went to the Finals in 2007. I kind of feel like he hit some big shots, game winners even, in the 2009 Playoffs, too. That was what, two years ago? LeBron couldn’t have lost “it” already, could he? The line can’t be that thin, can it?

In the 1930s, University of Chicago president Robert Hutchins waged a personal war against the encroachment into American universities of what he called “athleticism.” Under the belief that certain sports (particularly football) were cash cows, universities overemphasized athletics until they stopped being mere recreation and become institutions (or isms) instead. Hutchins felt this left universities woefully misguided. Teams were popular with students and the public who filled stadiums every Saturday, and university presidents soon found themselves believing their schools were noteworthy not because of academic reputation but because of their sports teams. “Athleticism” turned the primary business of the university into that of sports promotion in an attempt to draw more and more paying fans. In an article in the Saturday Evening Post entitled “Gate Receipts and Glory,” Hutchins suggested that university presidents had watched athleticism grow over the previous fifty years but did nothing about it. Spectator sports like football simply brought too much money to the table for universities to just run away, so Hutchins offered a solution. Since money causes athleticism and all the misguidance that goes along with it, “the cure is to take the money out of athletics.”( To do this, he proposed to, among other things, universally cap football ticket prices at ten cents each. Needless to say, it didn’t happen so Chicago decided instead to go its own way and just drop football entirely.) I agree with Hutchins that money is the problem with college sports, but my solution isn’t to take the money out, but rather to spread it around, particularly amongst those doing the most work: the players.